Inspector A. wondered if the priest sitting before him might be the person Emilia went out to meet every so often in the evenings. He was young and very handsome, and Inspector A. did not believe that priests and rabbis had no urges and desires, especially not since he and his wife had watched the movie Spotlight. For a moment, Inspector A. even went so far as to consider asking the priest where he’d been on the night Emilia died, because he thought she might have come to him for help after she was thrown out of the nursing home. But the Polish priest beat him to it, explaining that he hadn’t seen Emilia in the weeks preceding her death, first because she’d avoided him, or at least so it had seemed, and then because he’d gone to visit his family in Poland. Besides, he was the first person who insisted that Emilia could not have committed suicide. She had lived a very lonely life, the priest said, but she was on a journey of discovery, and unless something extremely unusual had happened in the two weeks before she died, he had trouble believing she could have suffocated herself. He wanted to know where Emilia was buried, was surprised to hear that it was in Israel and not Latvia, and asked Inspector A. if he could tell him where the grave was located so that he could visit and lay flowers.
When Inspector A. told Tadeusz that Emilia had stolen money from the woman she cared for, the priest said nothing. Inspector A. pressed him, asking if he’d known about it, and Tadeusz said softly, “No, but I might have suspected something.” He’d noticed Emilia putting large amounts of money in the donation basket that was passed around after prayers, and said she’d refused to come to confession even though he’d urged her to, as if she had something to hide. But he thought the money might have been coming from somewhere else, and that Emilia was hiding other things from him, not theft.
When asked if Emilia had told him about anyone she was in touch with, apart from the lady she cared for, the priest remarked that in the weeks before her death she had hinted at a relationship with a man whose flat she cleaned—that was where he thought she was getting the money. He didn’t know much about the man, except that he was the son of the old man Emilia had cared for before she moved to the nursing home, and that she cleaned his home on Sundays, before church. When Tadeusz asked if this man had been questioned, Inspector A. said no and made a note to himself. That afternoon he called Emilia’s employment agency and was given Nachum and Esther’s home phone number.
He called them a little after five, just as Father Tadeusz was preparing for weekly Mass and deciding to dedicate it to Emilia’s memory and say a few words about his meetings with her and about her life and death.
Esther was the first person who actually cried when she heard about Emilia’s death. She said, “My Emilia, I shouldn’t have let her go. I knew she should have stayed with me.” She was surprised when Inspector A. said he understood Emilia had been cleaning her son’s house until shortly before her death and asked for his phone number.
“You mean Ze’ev? Or Gil?” Esther asked. “They didn’t tell me she was working for them.”
She gave him both phone numbers, and first he phoned the wrong brother.
3
One morning Gil will suggest that she has lunch with him, and she will say no. He will ask why and she will say, “Because you know it’s a bad idea. It’s nice meeting like this, so why ruin it? I think there are lines we shouldn’t cross, don’t you?”
He will back off, but for a few days he will not come to the café in the mornings. When he returns she will ask, “So that’s that? It’s either lunch or nothing?” He will pretend to be surprised, act as if he’d forgotten about asking her out for lunch, and explain that he was on a work trip. “But maybe we could have lunch some time after all?” he’ll add, and she will laugh and say, “Are you really hungry?” Later that morning, just before he gets up to leave for work, she will go over to his table and say, “You know what? Okay. Lunch, but early. I’ll ask the nanny if there’s a day when she can stay until two or three. And it’s my treat.” He will smile and ask if she’s sure and she will say, “Yes, fuck it, why not,” but will add that they’ll have to meet somewhere there’s no chance of running into her husband.
A week later at the Jaffa port. Wednesday, early March.
They will arrange to meet there because her husband’s base is in north Tel Aviv, on the other side of town, and they will each get there on their own. She will look completely different, in a blue dress that hugs her hips and flares above the knees, because it will be a hot day, almost a heatwave, and she will wear heels, and from far away she will suddenly remind him of Orna. She is not pretty, but there will be something winning about the way she walks and the way she picks up her wine glass and looks at Gil and then lowers her eyes when she has nothing to say.
They will eat at a fish restaurant in the port and, despite the spring weather and the view of the old fishing boats in the marina and the option to smoke, they will not sit on the deck but inside, so as not to be seen. After lunch they will take a short walk along the port, heading north, to the clock tower just near Tadeusz’s church. She will say that she hasn’t been there for years, and Gil will look at her and say that he also can’t remember the last time he was there either.
At the beginning of the meal they will share moments of silence, almost awkwardness. As if beyond the café and the quick cigarette breaks they have nothing to say to one another. She will apparently decide that the way to break the ice is to be direct, even blunt, so she will say, “So, tell me how long you’ve been cheating on your wife.”
Gil will be surprised but not alarmed. He will smile. “Wow, that’s quite a way to start a conversation.” And then he will say, “It’s been a few years. But it’s very infrequent, despite what you may think.”
“What’s very infrequent?” she will ask, and he will insist he’s had no more than two or three flings, or acquaintances with women that developed into something you might call a relationship.
“Doesn’t your wife suspect anything?”
He will say she probably does. She likely knows and turns a blind eye. She has no choice because even though she also works, she’s financially dependent on him. Then he’ll ask about her and she’ll put her wine glass to her lips as she shakes her head and says, “Never.” She will add that up until a year or two ago she couldn’t even contemplate it.
“Then why are you here?” he will ask, and she’ll say, “Because this isn’t a year or two ago. And I’m still not sure I know why I’m here. Maybe curiosity.”
“Curiosity about what?”
“I can’t say exactly. About you? You strike me as a strange man, Gil. Really strange. But more likely it’s about me. Curiosity about what I can and cannot do. Or more importantly, what I can or cannot feel.”
When Gil asks her to explain what she means and what she finds strange about him, she will become evasive and say that several of her friends cheat on their husbands and talk about it with great excitement, but that she’ll probably never be able to do it. “Avner is the most jealous man in the world, there’s no way he would live with it.”
“But what can he do to you?” Gil will ask, and she will say, “I don’t want to think about that, okay? He’ll just break everything up. He’ll never forgive me. Isn’t that scary enough?”
For a while they will talk about other things.
When Gil mentions that their waitress reminds him of Noa, she will ask about his relationship with his daughters, and he will say that it’s always been great and is only getting better as the girls get older. Noa doesn’t have a boyfriend right now, so when she comes home from the army at weekends they sometimes go to the movies, and a couple of weeks ago they even went to a bar together. Hadass is insanely busy with exams and she’s more of a mummy’s girl, but he’s very close to her too.
He will order himself another glass of wine and say he’s decided not to go back to the office after lunch. For his entrée he will have sea bass with rice and gree
n beans, and she will have a salad. He will ask about her relationship with her daughters and also with her father, but very soon they will resume talking about affairs, when she starts questioning him on the practicalities: How does he do it? He will say that usually, after the initial acquaintance stage, which happens online or sometimes in other ways, they meet in a hotel in Tel Aviv or Herzliya, or at a B&B that lets rooms by the hour. But he also has a flat in Givatayim, which for the past year he’s been renting to tourists on Airbnb, and sometimes, mostly in winter, it sits empty. With longer relationships they sometimes even go overseas, for a weekend in nearby destinations like Athens or Cyprus or Bucharest—quick, inexpensive getaways that the women can easily disguise as shopping or work trips.
She will listen with focus, like a girl hearing the most important thing ever told to her for the first time in her life. When she says, “But why do you need it, actually? Explain that to me,” he will say, “I don’t need it. It just happens. I mean, it doesn’t make sense that it should stop just because we get married and grow a bit older, does it?”
“What should stop?”
“Wanting to meet new people. To get close to them. What turns me on is not the sex but the getting close. The true intimacy you suddenly have with someone new, whom you didn’t know before and who is gradually revealed to you. That’s what’s exciting, isn’t it?”
The restaurant will be practically empty during their meal, and by the time they have dessert and coffee there will be no other diners there. Gil will ask if he can put his hand on hers and she will say yes, and his soft, damp hand will stay on hers for several minutes, hiding her wedding ring. She will not resist. She will say to him quietly, “Do you understand that no one apart from my husband has touched me for more than ten years?”
After their short stroll, Gil will walk her to her car, which will be parked in the sandy car park near the clock tower square. It will be almost three o’clock.
He will ask if she’s sure she doesn’t want to come over to his empty flat or go to a hotel with him, now or any other time she chooses. She will say that she’s late for the nanny. She will open the car door and put her handbag on the passenger seat and then look at him and say, “I had a good time, really, but I’m afraid this is as much as you’re going to get out of me, Gil. Or as much as I’ll get out of myself, I don’t know. I don’t think I can do it. As it is, what’s happened is a lot more than I meant to happen.” He will smile and say, “As long as we keep having a cigarette together sometimes, it’s all good. After all, now I’m addicted.”
When they move in for a goodbye hug he will seek her lips and find them, and when she responds for an instant they will kiss. In the following weeks he will treat her differently. He will be bolder, more desperate, he will hardly lie, he will not give up easily when she says no. As if he is not the same Gil you both knew, or as if time has changed him too.
4
The police report stated that Attorney Gil Hamtzani was summoned to provide initial testimony concerning the death of Emilia Nodyeves approximately six weeks after her body was found on Ha’Galil Street. He came to Tel Aviv South Precinct on Ha’Masger Street at 11 A.M. and was questioned by Inspector A., the investigating officer overseeing the case, in his office on the second floor. The summary of the testimony, written in Inspector A.’s handwriting and signed by Gil, was added to the growing investigation file, at the bottom of which was an enlarged photograph of Emilia’s face, taken on the early Sunday morning when she was found, after the removal of the plastic bag from her head.
Gil confirmed right at the start of his testimony that he had known Emilia.
She had cared for his father for two years, and he met her when he visited his parents and at family events. He was not involved in her employment—the person who handled that was his brother Ze’ev—and he had never talked with her privately while she’d worked for his parents. To the best of his knowledge she had done her job well, and his father and mother had been pleased with her. He had known nothing about her at the time except that she was Latvian. And he thought she was older than she really was, forty-eight or fifty.
A few weeks after his father’s death, Emilia had contacted him at his office, on Esther’s recommendation. She needed legal counsel about her work permit and visa, and he had given her the advice pro bono, because of his mother’s request.
“What was the problem? Why did she need advice?” Inspector A. asked, and Gil explained that Emilia wanted to take another job, in addition to caring for the old lady at the nursing home where the agency had placed her. She wanted to know if she could do so with her current work permit, or if she could amend the permit issued by the Ministry of the Interior before she’d come to Israel. She explained that she needed extra income urgently, and he had the impression, from both her behaviour and her appearance, that she was in severe distress.
“What sort of distress? Can you describe it?” Inspector A. sat up straight in his chair and leaned closer to Gil. The things Gil said matched the assumptions he was developing at that very minute. He had the sense that Gil’s testimony could fill in several gaps in the case. “Financial distress, but perhaps emotional too. I can’t tell you exactly. I got the feeling she needed money urgently, maybe even a lot of money, to pay debts or send money abroad, I don’t know. So I gave her some work for a few weeks, even though I knew it was illegal—”
“We’ll get to that soon,” Inspector A. interjected. “Do you remember what you advised her to do in that meeting?”
“I explained to her that she couldn’t work at another job on her existing permit, and that it would be hard to change but I could try. And she asked me to try. I recommended that in the meantime she ask the employment agency for more work, but she said they weren’t giving her anything. She asked what would happen if she cleaned houses without reporting it and if they could deport her—she was absolutely unwilling to go back to Riga. I explained that they could, but it’s true that a few weeks later, when she called to find out if I’d managed to change the permit, I suggested she come and clean for me.”
At the bottom of Gil’s testimony, in the neat handwriting that had characterized him since he’d been in primary school in Nazareth, Inspector A. added a few questions that still bothered him after hearing what the lawyer had had to say: Who was she sending money to in Latvia? Why was she planning to go to Riga if she was so afraid of being sent back there? Was she mixed up in something financially or legally over there? Then he wrote himself a reminder and underlined it: Talk to the consulate again.
He asked Gil when Emilia had called him the second time and what exactly she’d asked for, and Gil said it was two or three weeks after she visited his office. She wanted to know if he’d been able to change her work permit, and he apologized and said he hadn’t. When he asked what she was going to do, she said she had no choice but to risk taking illegal cleaning jobs. She asked if he knew anyone looking for a cleaner, because she’d rather work for people she knew and could trust, and not put up signs with her name and phone number. At first he said he didn’t, but towards the end of the conversation, because of how distressed she sounded, he suggested she clean his flat. He had an investment property in Givatayim and it was empty at the time, in between renters and with a planned remodel, and he needed someone to clean it periodically. The main reason he suggested it was because he felt sorry for her and because of the close ties she’d had with his parents. When Inspector A. asked why he didn’t tell Esther that Emilia had started working for him, Gil said he didn’t want Esther to know that Emilia was in such a bad state.
Inspector A. asked when exactly Emilia had started working for him, and Gil said he couldn’t remember the exact date and probably did not have it written down. He explained that at first she’d come to his office, in Ramat Gan, and he’d driven her to the flat and shown her exactly what to clean and how.
“And how did she look then? Was there any chan
ge from how you remembered her?”
“I think so. Although, as I told you, I hadn’t seen her much before, so I’m not sure. She looked thin, almost emaciated, and as if she was under a lot of stress. As I said, she seemed very distraught.”
When Inspector A. asked how many times she’d cleaned his flat, Gil said he would estimate six to eight times. Roughly once every two weeks. They set up the work times on short phone calls that Gil made to Emilia’s mobile phone—a device the police had not found. Gil said he’d only seen her once in all those weeks, when he went to the flat to wait for a contractor who was giving him a bid for the refurbishment, and Emilia had just finished cleaning. Usually he left her the key in the fuse-box cupboard, with cash in an envelope, and she put the key back when she was done.
“Weren’t you afraid to leave her the key?”
“No. Why should I have been?”
“And you never met her anywhere else? In the evening, perhaps?”
“Why would I meet her in the evening?”
“I don’t know why, I’ll ask and you answer,” said Inspector A., even though the idea of Gil meeting Emilia outside of work struck him, too, as unreasonable.
“Of course not. But I’m trying to understand why you’re asking. After all, you don’t ask questions for no reason. Do you suspect me of something?”
“I’m asking because I have testimony that she was going out with a man, and you’re telling me she worked in your flat, and I want to understand if the two things are connected.”
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